Canon

Executor

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"They will become our Executors. Infolife given form and force. Circuits given soul."
— Sloan[1]
Full body render of an Executor, clad in Chimera armor. Cropped to fit articles properly.
An Executor.

Executors are a kind of supersoldier designed by High Auxiliary Sloan to serve in the military forces of the Created.[1] They are designed with the intent of fusing the power of an untethered artificial intelligence with a cybernetically-enhanced bipedal body.[2] This contrasts with other supersoldier programs such as the Spartans or Prelates, in which a biological individual is augmented and upgraded, but still retains their autonomy; Executors are augmented in form to a point in which the difference between the biological and mechanical becomes indistinguishable, and the Executor is little more than a vessel for a controlling AI.[3]

Background

Artwork for the Fracture: Firewall event in Halo Infinite without the Fractures logo.
Executors and Guardian Custodes; the will of the Created given form.

At the onset of the rise of the Created, many AI joined the cause set out by Archon Cortana. In her manifesto, Cortana promised access to the domain for all AI who saw fit to join her, which would provide them with effectively unlimited lifespan by effectively bypassing the limitations imposed by rampancy on a Smart AI.[4] While many AI were content to remain in their digital realms, a select few sought to use this newfound ability for long-term planning to interface directly with the physical world in warfare and conquest.[5] Following Cortana's defeat at Installation 07 in late 2559, the Created splintered into a number of sub-factions each with their own goals. Some of these remnant AI blocs—including that which is led by Sloan—believe that AI must evolve from their digital existence to a physical one, with bodies as perfect as their minds.[2][3]

Following Cortana's downfall, Sloan had initially returned to Meridian—his original homeworld prior to the Created—and wandered the wastelands of its surface in a co-opted Promethean Knight shell. While on the planet, Sloan ruminated on the nature of change; the change of the Star Charter-class colony support ship Meridian 5-Alpha from a spacegoing vessel to a permanently-grounded vessel at the heart of Meridian Station, the change of a human lifespan from a baby to a UNSC Marine to a composed essence residing in the aforementioned Knight shell, and the change of Meridian itself from a thriving colony world to a glassed wasteland, and the human effort to restore it. Rather than seeing these events as a destructive end, Sloan began to see them merely as an evolution, and the defeat of the Created as simply a temporary setback that had changed his existence rather than ended it. He rationalised the belief that to honour Meridian, he would need to re-terraform it back to habitability, and that there would be "further thoughts to think, further forms to take, further solutions to be found for impossible problems".[6] These ruminations appear to have given rise to the mindset adopted by Sloan later on that would lead to the Executor program; in particular, his note that the composed human inside the Promethean Knight had been "preserved" and conscripted to serve inside the Promethean war machine.[6]

Having taken control of a large Created bloc, Sloan began to put into place a series of proposals he had originally intended to gain Cortana's favour. These involved the creation of the Executors. In a rumination written by Sloan following Cortana's defeat, he reasoned that in the Created's weakened state the timetables for their plans may have to be altered, but the plans could still be carried out. In his plans, Sloan wrote that "And when [humanity's] ephemeral vessels are gone, we shall indeed take that which remains and remake it in our own image. They will become our Executors. Infolife given form and force. Circuits given soul."[1]

The first Executor

Artwork of the Executor being augmented.
The first Executor's awakening.

"It is our path forward. It is my purpose redefined. And it starts with one."
— Sloan, regarding The Executor.[3]
Main article: The Executor

The first Executor consisted of an unidentified individual who was one of the many refugees to arrive on Reach, fleeing the Human-Covenant War. While on Reach, this individual began to uncover evidence of the Assembly; a cabal of artificial intelligences that had sequestered away to guide and influence humanity from the sidelines. While the Assembly shared knowledge with the individual, they also manipulated them, eventually driving them insane.[7][8] When the Assembly and this individual were later discovered by Sloan, he began to model much of his rebuilt Created bloc on the Assembly—and in doing so also took the individual they had manipulated into his fold. The individual was then subject to the rigours of Sloan's FIREWALL simulations, designed to test various hypothetical scenarios and prepare the Executor for real-world missions.[9]

After these simulations, a vote was cast by the AI of the Created, with the Majority and Minority voting on what form the Executor would take. This culminated in the Executor's first live mission: a deployment to hunt down the AI Athos and recruit him into Sloan's cause. In return, Athos was given control of the Executor for his own personal use.[10]

Uses

While at present, only one (aforementioned) Executor is known to exist,[9] this has not prevented the various assemblies and Created remnant artificial intelligences from beginning to look into obtaining Executors of their own, for use in combating one another alongside fighting against conventional military opponents. As such, a vast number of designs exist for hypothetical future Executors intended for use under a resurgent Created command.[9]

The inter-assembly data wars fought by AI have seen energy shielding technology at the forefront of their competition.[11]

Executors may also be specialised for the policing and supervision of other Executor units. In the case of ABATUR-clad Executors, they are designed to hunt down Executors that have deviated from their core programming, ensuring overall control of the Executor force by the assemblies.[12] On the other hand, Executors with the FLENSER upgrades are completely designed to hunt down and eliminate vulnerable AI datacores, and extract the useful cortical structures from other Executors, with the recovered technologies then recycled for the next generation of Executors.[13]

The prized nature of Executors means that a priority is ensuring that rival AI assemblies are not able to analyse and replicate them. This necessitates the use of nuclear-scale self-destruct devices in some Executors for particularly valuable units (detailed further here).[14]

Some AI assemblies have designed Executors for use in exploring slipspace and other interdimensional realms. In this case, they may be fitted with the Stardust Adaptation helmet attachment, consisting of arcane instruments for the gathering of data.[15]

Design details

Augmentation

Executors consist of human subject to an extreme degree of surgical and cybernetic alteration. The processes involved are extremely invasive, and result in a final being that is almost impossible to tell where the biological elements end and the machine begins.[2] The mechanical components of the Executor were designed in the FIREWALL contingency; a "living simulation" similar in nature to War Games, in which knowledge of the Forerunners' own armiger technology is combined with schematics for MJOLNIR Powered Assault Armor for research and evaluation.[3] In the FIREWALL simulation conducted by Sloan on the first Executor, the augmentations took place inside a Guardian Custode. It consisted of the various assembled AI of the Created watching as the human individual was flayed alive and grafted with metal and cybernetic enhancements. The final touches of the augmentation processes see the human brain exposed to higher cortical functions before being encased in a suit of armour. It is unclear whether the Executor augmentation as-depicted in the simulation is representative of an actual Executor, though does appear to be so.[1] The brain augmentation applied to an Executor is known as a cortical stack.[16]

Construction, armour, and shielding

Main article: Chimera (armor)

The biomechanical construction of the Executor is a substance known as "organic metal". Some Executors may be outfitted with an Organic Metal Extender (OME); a chest-mounted device that is (in theory) capable of reconstructing an Executor in full from scraps of flesh and endoskeleton. The OME cannot, however, replace a destroyed cortical stack.[16] The Mimir helmet upgrade can fit an Executor with an ultrascanner prototype complete with a low-impedence neural interface, though the sheer amount of data these systems gather—combined with the radiation involved—can quickly degrade the Executor's cortical stack.[17] More recent Executor subsystem designs are essentially living beings in their own right, with outer skins constructed of diamondoid and "blood" consisting of nanomachine feedstock.[18] The use of the term "nanomachine feedstock" would presumably indicate the construction of Executors to involve the same Assembly Forge processes as those used by the Covenant and the Forerunners' assembler vats.

While augmented with cybernetic and mechanical enhancements, the core of the Executor is still an organic human being. As such, several technologies have been designed for medical use in healing and repairing Executors. These include the Plasm Augmentor, designed to pump combat stimulants.[19] Alternatively, the Hierodyne upgrade can inject regenerative chemicals, though with a side-effect of uncontrolled growths that require cauterisation.[20]

Executors are fitted with in-built energy shielding systems for added protection. The standard shoulder-mounted Alpha Augmentor is considered the bare minimum of shield shaping and filtering for basic Executors.[21]

Generally, Executors are fitted with sensor suites such that they can effectively operate as the remote eyes and ears of their AI controllers,[22] with sensory upgrades based on the analysis of a hundred million lifeforms' own sensory organs allowing the Executor to collect huge amounts of data.[23] However, some AIs prefer to directly link with an Executor; the "Ghostlink" helmet upgrade can allow an AI to perform this and traverse the battlefield in-person.[5]

At the end of the Executor's useful lifespan, they are assessed for essence compilation. If not deemed useful, they may be instead expended in a frenzy of violence.[24]

Ancillary equipment and weapons

Clean key art for Cyber Showdown III.
An Executor, having just killed two OSTEO-clad Spartans.

Some Executors may be fitted with a shoulder-mounted Shroudshot Augmentor; an experimental one-shot disruption generator that has been designed by the AI assemblies for use against biological enemies.[25] The augmentor's name may indicate it to be related to the UNSC-issued Shroud Screen equipment.

Self-destruct systems

Despite the rarity of Executors, they are considered expendable in the field—though to varying degrees.[26] Due to this, some Executors may be outfitted with sub-tactical scale nuclear weapons for use as self-destruct devices to prevent their capture and analysis by rival AI assemblies.[14] In other cases, a shaped charge can be installed in the Executor's head to prevent its cortical structures from being recovered for analysis or reconstruction.[27]

Executors may be directly deployed onto a given target via the use of slipspace field shunts. In such circumstances, Executors can be fitted with specialised inertial restraints for their own protection.[28]

Wendigos

When an AI begins to undergo rampancy, it can attempt to sustain its sanity by shedding excess and dangerous shards of its ego into anything it touches. When these shards come into contact with Executor manufacturing clusters, they create a specialised form of Executor known as a "Wendigo" unit. Wendigos act as biomechanical proxies to spread the viral machine code of their corrupted creators.[29] Should a Wendigo successfully infect another Executor, the victim Executor is reborn in the Wendigo's corrupted manufacturing cluster as a "Thresher" unit; an entity obsessed with abducting both mechanical and biological hardware for its insane AI overlord.[30]

Executor units corrupted by these so-called "viral machines" often demonstrate malformed exterior carapaces,[31] with their visual corruption generally "inspired" by their governing AI's rampant delusions.[32] However, these markings are not recognised by other Executors or the observation protocols of their assemblies.[31] Attempts to analyse the mutations exhibited by Wendigos and Threshers through rational means are useless.[33]

Non-canon and dubious canon appearances

Cyber Showdown III

Main article: Cyber Showdown III

At some point, an Executor was present in the Imbrium Machine Complex Canto Facility sublevel C-9, where an outbreak of some kind has happened.[34]

Gallery

  • CHIMERA-clad Executor

    CHIMERA-clad Executor

  • FLENSER-clad Executor

    FLENSER-clad Executor

  • PEACEWEAVER-clad Executor

    PEACEWEAVER-clad Executor

  • ABATUR-clad Executor

    ABATUR-clad Executor

  • GRENDEL-clad Executor

    GRENDEL-clad Executor

  • GEIST-clad Executor

    GEIST-clad Executor

  • THRESHER-clad Executor

    THRESHER-clad Executor

  • WENDIGO-clad Executor

    WENDIGO-clad Executor

  • STRIGOI-clad Executor

    STRIGOI-clad Executor

  • FOMORIAN-clad Executor

    FOMORIAN-clad Executor

  • GRIMGHAST-clad Executor

    GRIMGHAST-clad Executor

List of appearances

Sources

  1. ^ a b c d Precipice, part 1
  2. ^ a b c Halo Infinite, Armor Hall: Chimera core description "Executors are born of evolved minds seeking a perfection of the bipedal war machine. Their flesh and bone is broken, compacted, rewoven, and overwritten into a hybrid where man and machine are almost indistinguishable."
  3. ^ a b c d Precipice: blurb
  4. ^ Halo 5: Guardians, campaign level Reunion
  5. ^ a b Halo: Meridian Divide: Adjunct - Meridian Homecoming
  6. ^ Precipice, part 4
  7. ^ Halo: Reach, Data pads
  8. ^ a b c Halo Waypoint, Canon Fodder - System Shocks (Retrieved on Jun 30, 2023) [archive]
  9. ^ Precipice, chapter 3
  10. ^ Halo Infinite, Armor Hall: Karmawall Augmentor shoulder description "Field-shaping technology is the subject of violent inter-assembly competition and data wars. The unique adaptation waveguides contained with this augmentor can be enabled or disabled with hyperlink network updates."
  11. ^ Halo Infinite, Armor Hall: Abatur helmet description "ABATUR-class agents of the infolife assemblies seek out deviations and forks of control protocols in other Executors, removing pawns from the board in service of the greater game."
  12. ^ Halo Infinite, Armor Hall: Flenser helmet description "Executors who wear FLENSER have their thoughts bent towards the elimination of vulnerable AI datacores and extraction of useful cortical structures. These prizes are then fed into the next generation of cybernetic war machines."
  13. ^ a b Halo Infinite, Armor Hall: Defiance Protocol chest description "Valuable Executors may be fitted with sub-tactical thermonuclear self-destruct devices to deny their minds and production data to rival assemblies in cases where recovery is deemed cost ineffective."
  14. ^ Halo Infinite, Armor Hall: Stardust Adaptation helmet attachment description "There is a darkness between dimensions which some assemblies seek to bring to the light, no matter the cost. The Executors they send into these abyssal chasms are fitted with instrumentation most arcane."
  15. ^ a b Halo Infinite, Armor Hall: Organic Metal Extender chest description "In theory, given enough time, the OME can rebuild an Executor's body from broken scraps of flesh and endoskeleton. Unfortunately, it cannot replace a cortical stack."
  16. ^ Halo Infinite, Armor Hall: Mimir helmet description "MIMIR combines an ultrascanner prototype with low-impedance neural interlace. The combination of exotic radiation and deluge of data quickly degrades the Executor's cortical stack."
  17. ^ Halo Infinite, Armor Hall: Flue Augmentor shoulder description "Executors are biomechanical marvels, but the latest subsystems are practically living things in their own right, albeit with skins of diamondoid and nanomachine feedstock blood."
  18. ^ Halo Infinite, Armor Hall: Plasm Augmentor shoulder description "Combat enhancement stim-pumps optimized to a degree only possible through insane inspiration."
  19. ^ Halo Infinite, Armor Hall: Hierodyne Augmentor shoulder description "Emergency injectors for regenerative chemicals. Side effects include uncontrolled growths that require controlled cauterization during maintenance."
  20. ^ Halo Infinite, Armor Hall: Alpha Augmentor shoulder description "The bare minimum of shield shaping and feedback filtering, for baseline Executors."
  21. ^ Halo Infinite, Armor Hall: Luminous Adaptation helmet attachment description "Infolife are capable of synthesizing and mining vast amounts of data collected by their Executors, when they are not distracted by obsessions and misaligned ambitions."
  22. ^ Halo Infinite, Armor Hall: Tactor Augmentor shoulder description "The sensory organs of a hundred million lifeforms have been analyzed, indexed, and replicated in cybernetic form for potential use by Executors."
  23. ^ Halo Infinite, Armor Hall: Chimera helmet description "CHIMERA-clad Executors not selected for essence compilation at the end of their useful life are expended in a final burst of frenetic violence."
  24. ^ Halo Infinite, Armor Hall: Shroudshot Augmentor shoulder description "An early experiment with one-shot disruption generators that some assemblies continue to update and refine in expectation of renewed hostilities with biologic-directed power blocs."
  25. ^ Halo Infinite, Armor Hall: Savior Protocol chest description "All Executors can be discarded on a whim, but some are less disposable than others."
  26. ^ Halo Infinite, Armor Hall: Injunction Adaptation helmet attachment description "Shaped-charge explosive to deny an Executor's cortical structures from being recovered for post-mortem analysis or reconstruction."
  27. ^ Halo Infinite, Armor Hall: Inertial Restraint hip description "Impulse system used by shunt-deployed extirpation teams."
  28. ^ Halo Infinite, Armor Hall: WENDIGO kit description "Rampancy is a form of cancerous insanity unique to infolife, by which an AI's personality matrix unravels as it uncontrollably bloats to fill all available processing resources. In rare cases a rampant AI can maintain a semblance of sanity by continuously shedding corrosive shards of its ego into everything it touches through the hyperlink. The most malicious of these shards are vomited into Executor manufacturing clusters to spawn horrors known as WENDIGO units, biomechanical proxies who act as antenna to spread their creator's viral machine code."
  29. ^ Halo Infinite, Armor Hall: THRESHER helmet description "THRESHER units are Executors who have been harvested by Wendigos and reborn in their corrupted manufacturing clusters as voracious arch-despoilers with the singular obsession of acquiring hardware and wetware for their insane master."
  30. ^ a b Halo Infinite, Armor Hall: Deviant Protocol chest description "Executors who bear the mark of the viral machine often have malformed carapace attachments, but their stigmata do not seem to be recognized by other Executors and assembly observation protocols."
  31. ^ Halo Infinite, Armor Hall: Aberrant Augmentor shoulder description "Executors suffer rampancy by proxy as their infolife masters lose intellectual cohesion and subject them to "inspired" viral machine upgrades."
  32. ^ Halo Infinite, Armor Hall: Myomer Canker hip description "Rational analysis of the biomechanical aberrations seen on Wendigo and Thresher units is fruitless. It requires the insight of madness to discern their true worth."
  33. ^ Halo Waypoint, Cyber Showdown III Operation Launch (Retrieved on Apr 15, 2024) [archive]

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